Consistency Makes Your Family Tree More Professional

Be consistent with facts in your family tree for a professional result.

I'm surprised you've stuck with me. Some of my genealogy suggestions seem like a lot of work. And they are. But if you're building your family tree out of true interest, you'll want to do it right.

I've asked you to add details to your document images. To download entire towns full of vital records. To use spreadsheets to document and track everything.

Since I didn't get much push-back on those tedious projects, I hope you'll be open to this idea: Consistency.

In my day job, I'm a website content producer. I've always thought consistency gives any website credibility. If a website says one thing on one page, and something different on another, the company doesn't look professional.

Now imagine you're visiting someone's family tree. If they use a different address format for everyone, for example, their work looks unprofessional. Would you trust someone with a half-mowed, weed-filled, messy yard to be your landscaper? Do you trust someone with an inconsistent family tree to be your source?

Lately I've noticed 3 areas where I want to be more consistent:

• job titles
• addresses
• immigration descriptions

Let's see what I can do about it.

There are a few ways to see if you're being consistent in your family tree.

Job Titles

In Family Tree Analyzer, I can see a list of every occupation I've recorded in my family tree. If you haven't downloaded the free Family Tree Analyzer program, go there now. You're missing out.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and open your latest GEDCOM file. Go to the Main Lists / Occupations window.

Granted, you'll have different job titles because they were like that on the source document. But, did you make any typos?

If you find an entry you don't like and want to change, double-click it to see which person(s) has this job title. Make the edit in your family tree software.

All my ancestors alive before 1898 were born in Italy. So I have a ton of Italian-language occupations in my family tree. Using Find and Replace in Family Tree Maker, I added an English translation to each Italian job title. For instance, "pastore (shepherd)".

I noticed a few translations where the Find and Replace messed me up because it was a multi-word job title. Massaro means steward or farm manager and pastore means sheep farmer. But a massaro di pecore is a sheep-farm manager. I wound up with a job title that says "massaro (steward or farm manager) di pecore (sheep farmer)".

With Family Tree Analyzer, I can spot these boo-boos and fix them in Family Tree Maker.

Addresses

I like to add the word "County" to U.S. place names. It's a personal choice, but I think "241 North Road, Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, New York, USA" is clearer than "241 North Road, Poughkeepsie, Dutchess, New York, USA".

Whichever format you prefer, be consistent. Scan the list of locations in Family Tree Analyzer's Locations tab or the Places tab of Family Tree Maker. Does anything glaring jump out at you?

Having a blueprint for recording certain facts makes it easy to be consistent.

Immigration Descriptions

I first started building my family tree by searching the Ellis Island website. Then I bought Family Tree Maker and came up with a format for immigration descriptions. It went like this:

Arrived aboard the [ship name] [with whichever relative(s)] to join [person] at [address].

But I had to change that format after a while. You see, I started recording each person's departure date from Italy as an Emigration fact. That's the day the ship left the port of Naples. In the Emigration fact's description field in Family Tree Maker, I use this format:

Left for [port city] on the [ship name].

I like that format. But since the Emigration fact includes the ship name, I don't need to repeat it in the Immigration fact. From then on, my Immigration fact follows this format:

Arrived [with whichever relative(s)] to join [person] at [address].

Whenever I notice the old format I fix it. But it'd be great to see a list of all these facts and work to correct them. The best way I've found to review all the immigration facts is to open my GEDCOM file in a text editor.

I can search for "IMMI" and keep pressing the F3 key to see the next one and the next one. When I see one I want to change, the person's name will be a few lines up. Then I can switch to Family Tree Maker and make my edit.

Think about your own style and habits when working on your family tree. Is there anything you changed along the way? Should you go back to the older facts and make them match? I would, but I didn't win the Miss Consistency crown for nothing.

If you want to tackle any particular fact-type, opening your latest GEDCOM is a good idea. Remember to make updates to your tree, not the GEDCOM file.

I wish people wouldn't say they want to trash their family tree and start over. Don't throw away your work. Fix it. And polish it with consistency. Look how professional you are!

How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

They probably belong in your family tree, right? Those families with your name, from your town. You have every reason to believe they're related to you.

But you haven't found that connecting ancestor yet.

You've got these disconnected families floating in your family tree file. They sit there, waiting for you to find the connection.

How easily can you find those families you added long ago, so you can work on finding out more about them?

Here's a solution I hope you'll try.

Use an image to identify unattached
people in your family tree at a glance.

I've written three times in the past about a software program called Family Tree Analyzer. I was astonished when I discovered this free program. It does exactly what I'd been struggling to write a program to do. But it does it better than I could ever have done. And it does much more than my program ever would have done.

Get the latest version of the program at http://ftanalyzer.com. You may need to uninstall the previous version before you can install this one.

Here's the feature I want you to look at. First, export a current GEDCOM file from your family tree software. Then launch Family Tree Analyzer and use it to open the GEDCOM.

Click the second tab, labelled Individuals, to see a line for every person in your tree. Go all the way over to the Relation column and click it to sort your people by their relation to you.

You'll see:

• Blood relations
• Relations by marriage
• Direct ancestors
• People married to your direct blood relations
• The root person (presumably you), and finally,
• Unknown

Unknown: these are the people in your tree who are not attached to you—whether by accident or on purpose.

If you can print to a file, go ahead and print this relation-sorted view. You can refer to it again and again, taking advantage of the search function of the digital file you created. Don't print to paper! It's going to be a lot of pages. Mine is 1,358 pages.

Click back to the first tab in Family Tree Analyzer for a second—the one labelled Gedcom Stats. Beneath the "Loading file" messages you'll see how many of each type of relationship you have. My file says:

Direct Ancestors : 189
Blood Relations : 1456
Married to Blood or Direct Relation : 543
Related by Marriage : 12480
Unknown relation : 4959

That last number, 4,959 unknown relations, comes as a big shock to me. That's a lot! How many families have I collected on speculation? Further inspection shows me that very distant, convoluted relations are labelled Unknown. That includes the father-in-law of a cousin of my sister-in-law.

Now you've got the list of unrelated people. This next tip came from someone else, but I can't remember who. I wrote it in a notebook which makes me think I saw it on a YouTube genealogy video. And I subscribe only to Ancestry.com's Crista Cowan, so this tip may belong to her.

Here it is: Create a graphic image (or borrow mine from this article) that says something like "No Relation". Attach this image to each person on your list of unknown relations who is truly unconnected to you. Make it their profile picture.

Now the unrelated people will be easy to spot. Better yet, in Family Tree Maker I can select that image from my tree's media collection and see a list of who it is attached to.

The goal now is to focus on these unrelated families. Do the legwork. Find out all you can about them, keeping an eye open for that missing link to you.

After some research, you may decide to remove some unrelated people from your family tree. Or they may become relatives.

And one day, you may find that your "No Relation" people are no more!

And speaking of Family Tree Analyzer:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree

When to Use Estimates in Your Family Tree

Estimates in your tree can help you avoid mistakes. See where they belong.

Family Tree Analyzer is a wildly useful, free program for genealogists. Each time I run it, I find something else I want to do with it.

Here's what I'm going to do with Family Tree Analyzer today.

This free tool offers countless ways to find the errors or missing info in your family tree.

A while ago, I created a policy to follow with my family tree. Every individual in my tree needs to have an estimated birth year and at least a country of birth. If I don't know when someone was born, I can:

• give them about the same birth year as their spouse
• subtract 25 from the year their oldest known child was born
• add 25 to their younger parent's age

Enter an estimated age in your family tree as "about" whatever year. Family Tree Maker, the genealogy software program I use, automatically abbreviates about as "Abt". Your software may handle this automatically, too.

Note: Whenever I enter an estimated date, I do not add a source. That way I know my own policy is the only source.

With an estimated age in your tree, you won't set someone born "Abt 1800" as the parent of someone born in 1920. It can also help you decide which of the 13 men named "Giovanni Pozzuto" in your tree is the one you're looking for. (And that's not counting all my Giovannantonio Pozzutos!)

Adding each person's likely country of birth and death is helpful, too. It can prevent a mix-up between a family that came to America and one that never left their mother country.

Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) makes it easy to see who in your family tree is missing a birth year and country. First, go to ftanalyzer.com to download the latest PC or Mac version. Launch the program and open your newest GEDCOM file. (I just realized you can drag and drop your GEDCOM into the FTA window!)

Once FTA loads your file, click the Main Lists tab. You may see a lot of empty fields in the BirthLocation and DeathLocation columns. In the BirthDate column, look for the word UNKNOWN.

Family Tree Analyzer helps you find everyone in your tree with no birth date—not even an estimate.

I've been on a roll lately, adding dozens and dozens of babies from my grandfather's hometown to my tree. So I have more than 22,000 people in my family tree. To make this task easier with such a big tree, I can click any column name in FTA to sort the results.

If I click the BirthDate column, all my UNKNOWNs group together. I'm happy to see I have only 11 of them. Those are usually people I added in a hurry, or while the dog was begging me for peanut butter. I can check all 11 people in my family tree and calculate their estimated birth year. It didn't take long for me to apply my rules and give each of the 11 people an estimated birth year and country.

Next, if I click the BirthLocation column in FTA, all the blank fields group together. Oh no. I've got tons and tons of blank birth locations.

When it comes to adding an estimated country of birth or death, there may be times when you want to keep it blank. Was the oldest child in a family born before or after the parents migrated? If you're not sure, you should leave it blank. Otherwise you might think you shouldn't look for that child on a ship manifest.

That's why I made another policy for the estimated birth or death country. If it's before 1850, I feel safe in assuming my relatives were born and died in Italy. There wasn't a lot of trans-Atlantic migration going on at that time. And my hometowns are so remote, and were so poor, that taking a ship somewhere wasn't an option then. I can assume my Angela Bianco—born in 1772 and died in 1836—was only ever in Italy. I may not be positive which town she was born in, but I feel sure it was in Italy.

Adding these unsourced estimates can help you avoid errors. And it tells FTA not to look in the Canada, Ireland, US, or UK Census for someone who was born and died in another country.

My own list of empty places of birth is overwhelming. It's something I've been more careful about recently. And I fix it each time I find someone with a blank location. Family Tree Analyzer is a good motivator for me to do a better job with so many aspects of my family tree. What can it show you today?

2 Ways to Give Your Family Tree a Checkup

Don't wait for an annual checkup for your family tree. Do it often.

Have you added any people to your family tree lately? Have you added or changed any facts? Then it's time for a checkup.

Even when you think you're being extra careful, mistakes can happen. Why not spend a few minutes every 2 months or so to find and fix your slip-ups? The things you forgot and the goofs you made will surprise you.

Here are 2 ways to give your family tree a checkup. You'll feel more confident about your tree after you've fixed some errors. You'll feel even more confident if you don't find any errors!

1. Run Family Tree Analyzer

The free Family Tree Analyzer program gives you one-stop shopping for all kinds of errors. Launch it, load your latest GEDCOM file, and click the Data Errors tab.

Check all the boxes to find these errors:

• Birth dates that are:
  
  • after the person's death
  • more than 9 months after their father died, or any time after their mother died
  • before either of their parents were 13 years old
  • after their mother turned 60 years old
• Death dates that are:
  
  • after their burial (yikes)
  • after they were 110 years old or more
• Marriage dates that are:
  
  • after the bride or groom's death
  • before the bride or groom turned 13 years old

Give your family tree a quick checkup with the powerful error finder in Family Tree Analyzer.

You may have what I call legitimate errors. For instance, I do have some babies who were born before one of their parents was 13. In one case, when I looked in my family tree, I found a note saying "The mother was 12 years old." That's more of an "unlikely" than an "impossible" feat.

I also have a baby born almost 11 months after his father died. But that's what the birth record says. I have a note wondering about the man who reported the baby's birth. Is it possible he was the real father?

If seeing all the errors at once is too much, click one checkbox at a time, and resolve or look into those errors.

2. Check Your Family Tree Software

The only family tree software I've ever used is Family Tree Maker. I hope that you're using desktop software for your family tree, and not keeping it only online. Building your tree online doesn't give you the same level of control. And you'll miss out on lots of features.

Every once in a while I check a few of the tabs in Family Tree Maker for errors. This time around I found several place-name errors. I'll bet they got messed up when I had a failed synchronization with Ancestry.com. But they were an easy fix.

In Family Tree Maker, look at these tabs:

• Check Media for images that are:
  
  • uncategorized
  • missing a caption, date, or other information
• Check Places to find any that are not properly categorized
• Check Sources to find any that have no facts associated with them

Each tab in Family Tree Maker gives you a different way to find errors.

If you give your tree regular checkups, your errors should be minor. Of course, your first checkup may be a bit of a shocker.

Make this a routine and keep your family tree healthy and hearty.

Report Finds Marriage Mishaps in Your Family Tree

Anytime you do a lot of work on your family tree, it's a smart idea to let Family Tree Analyzer have a look at it. This free software seems to offer me a new way to dissect my GEDCOM file each time I use it. And I've been doing a lot of work on my tree recently.

Last week I finished perfecting the citations in my family tree for these sources:

• 1851 England Census
• 1861 Census of Canada
• 1861 England Census
• 1871 England Census
• 1880 U.S. Federal Census
• 1881 England Census
• 1891 England Census
• 1900 U.S. Federal Census
• 1901 England Census
• 1905 New York State Census
• 1910 U.S. Federal Census
• 1911 England Census
• 1915 New York State Census
• 1920 U.S. Federal Census
• 1925 New York State Census

That adds up to 944 citations shared among family members found on the same census. Before I fixed them, a few sources had more than 700 citations each due to a catastrophic sync failure with my tree on Ancestry.com. I've given up trying to sync, but by next year I'll upload a clean version of my tree using a new tree name. I won't sync with it once it's uploaded.

Time for a Quick Check-Up

After all that editing, I wanted to see what Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) thinks of my latest GEDCOM file.

My GEDCOM Stats in FTAnalyzer had a strange line item telling me my family tree had some errors.

When you open your GEDCOM in FTA, you get a summary screen filled with basic facts about your tree. This time, I spotted something unusual. FTA said I had 4 lone individuals listed as single families. I needed to find them and see what was going on.

I found them by doing something I hadn't tried before. Usually I click FTA's Main Lists tab which opens to the Individuals tab. This lists everyone in your tree. But this time I clicked the Families tab next to the Individuals tab. I scrolled way to the right and found a column called Family Size. I sorted the data in that column from A to Z, putting all the families with a size of 1 at the top of the list. To my surprise, there were 41 families of 1.

5 Types of "Marriage Problems"

I opened my Family Tree Maker file and found each person from the FTA list, one-by-one. These "families of 1" fell into the following categories:

1. An unwed parent whose child's name you know from their birth record. In these cases, there's nothing you need to do. It really is a single-person family with a child.
2. Someone you meant to delete from the file but overlooked. Before you delete them, delete any of their citations or images. And detach them from an Unknown Spouse* if necessary.
3. Someone whose parents you deleted because you don't want to trace their family. (That's my in-law rule in action.) You may need to detach them from unknown parents. Otherwise leave them be.
4. Someone with a marriage date but no spouse. Take the time to search for the source of this incomplete fact and add their spouse. I've found Italian birth records with a marriage date, but no spouse's name!
5. A complete mystery, unattached to anyone, who you may as well delete.

*Unknown Spouse—As I worked through the list of 41 people, I found that many had an Unknown Spouse attached to them. Even babies who died young had these mysterious spouses. To see the unknown spouse in Family Tree Maker, go to a person's detail page. Then click Relationships rather than Facts or Timeline. If there is a partial marriage fact, delete it. Then detach the individual from their unknown spouse. Now the phantom spouse is gone from your file.

How many of these lurkers are hiding in your family tree? Here's how to find and eliminate them.

When I finished dealing with the 41 people with a family size of 1, I exported a new GEDCOM. Then I opened it in Family Tree Analyzer. Now I have 9 people with a family size of 1 because I made the decision to keep each of them. (Almost all are single parents.) The initial message from FTA saying I had 4 lone individuals listed as single families is gone.

This week I'll tackle my 1930, 1940, and 1950 U.S. Federal Census citations. Then I want to jump straight to the passenger lists of people coming through Ellis Island. Most of the immigrants in my family tree arrived in New York, so this is an important source to whip into shape. Then I'll continue working through my sources in alphabetical order.

After that, I have to deal with my countless Italian document citations. That's fine—I've wanted to work on those for a long time.

How Healthy is Your Family Tree?

If you've been working on your family tree for a while, you've no doubt gotten better at it with practice. That means your earliest work isn't as good as it should be. In my case, I know that censuses and ship manifests for my closest relatives are what I added first. And I'm fixing them as I work my way through my citations.

How did you begin your family tree? Were you searching for certain types of documents  first, like me? Did you begin with an inherited tree that someone else created? Take a look at the different reports FTA can offer you, such as:

• One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree
• Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates
• 4 Problems You Can Fix with Family Tree Analyzer

How to Find the Stragglers in Your Family Tree

I'm living in my 16th home, so I know a thing or two about moving. To lighten the load before you pack, you sort your stuff into three categories: keep, sell, or throw away.

We can use a similar rule on our family trees. I generated a list of unrelated people in my family tree. I fit each person into one of three categories: research, keep, or delete.

This started when a Family Tree Maker user asked how to find the loose (unrelated) people in her family tree. One person answered "Family Tree Analyzer" without an explanation. I launched my copy of the program and answered with these instructions:

Family Tree Analyzer is a free program that can analyze your tree in many ways. Export a GEDCOM from your tree and open it with Family Tree Analyzer. Once it's open, click the Main Lists tab and view the Individuals tab (the first tab). Scroll to the right to find the Relation column and click to sort by it. The "Unknowns" are your loose people.

I did this and exported my full list of people to a spreadsheet. Then I sorted and deleted everyone who did have a relationship to me.

Take a fresh look at the unrelated people in your family tree.

Now I had a spreadsheet of all the unrelated people in my family tree. I set out to categorize them as research, keep, or delete. I added a new column to my spreadsheet with the heading "Reason." As I worked my way down the list of alphabetized names, I added the reason they're in my tree.

For example, I had dozens of disconnected people with the last name Asahina. They're in my tree because of an undocumented connection to my husband's Ohama family. In the "Reason" column, I gave each of these people "Asahina" as the reason they're in my tree.

Other people are in my tree because my family says they are cousins, but the documents don't exist. I gave them a last name as a "Reason." They are either Saviano (my great grandmother's maiden name) or Sarracino (my great grandfather's name).

Now that everyone in the list had a particular reason to be there, I sorted the spreadsheet by the reasons.

• Some people were from my grandfather's hometown. I worked with vital records to figure out their connection. I had lots of success and deleted them from the spreadsheet.
• A couple of families were in the published 1742 census for my grandfather's town. I did some research, but I couldn't find a bridge between the civil records and 1742. I decided to keep these 12 people anyway.
• There were a few families of three: two parents and a baby. I searched for more of their children. Unfortunately, all the children died young. Without a marriage to build on, I could not connect this small family to anyone else. I deleted them from my family tree and the spreadsheet.
• When it came to the Asahina family, my own notes for two different people gave me the connection I was seeking. The story is, an Ohama family gave one of their babies to a childless cousin. As shocking as that sounds, it's a Japanese tradition. My own father-in-law was nearly given away! In the Ohama family, I'd entered a baby named _____ Asahina with a note saying, "this is the baby they gave away." In the Asahina family, I had attached a note to a woman named Masa Asahina. "A distant cousin says Masa is the Ohama baby given to the Asahina family." Hurray! I merged _____ Asahina with Masa Asahina, connecting the entire family. I removed them from my spreadsheet of unrelated people.
• I tried again to connect a Saviano clan to myself. The family says they are cousins, and I have no doubt of that. But their hometown didn't keep civil records before 1861. Their church records are lacking, too. I added some new documents and facts, but they are still loose in my tree. I will keep them there.

My family tree still has 161 unrelated people I've chosen to keep. Twelve are from the 1742 census of Grandpa's town. The rest are from the town without documentation. I'm OK with that. They all have a now-documented reason for being in my family tree. I'll be on the lookout to see if any distant cousins know more about them than I do. So far, they don't.

In the end, I researched everyone in the list to some extent, deleted a bunch, and kept 161 people. And that's how you sort out and lighten the load before you move on to more research.

If you use Family Tree Maker, use these settings to find the unrelated people in your family tree.

Someone else had a different answer to the "how to find loose people" question. They recommended Family Tree Maker's Kinship Report. With 29,000+ people in my tree, the report takes about 30 minutes to run, and it's 979 pages long. I can export to a spreadsheet by clicking Share, Export to CSV. Then, in Excel, I can filter the results to show only the "Unrelated" Relationship.

I recommend you go with Family Tree Analyzer for quick, useful, effective results. Then get moving and sort out your people.

2 Ways to Find the Loose Ends in Your Family Tree

You know all those things you left unfinished in your tree? No you don't.

With so many branches in your family tree, how can you find all the loose ends? How can you find every spot where you didn't finish searching for facts?

I have countless branches in my family tree. That's what happens when you piece together everyone who ever lived in your ancestral hometowns. Researching one of my grandfather's towns added 15,000 people to my tree. And now I'm working on the other grandfather's town.

Sound crazy? Think of it this way. I'm so familiar with every family name and street name from my grandfather's towns that the worst handwriting doesn't slow me down a bit. Plus, I had to work out every relationship in town to take Grandpa's branch back to the 1690s.

The whole time I was working on his town, I was dreaming of doing the same for all my ancestral towns. But before I add another 15,000 Italians to my family tree, I want to take the time to tie up some loose ends.

Here are 2 great ways to quickly see which birth, marriage, and death facts you're missing. These are loose ends you may be able to tie up.

1. Use Your Family Tree Software

I use Family Tree Maker, so you'll have to see how you can do this in your program. The idea is to sort your index of people by birth date, death date, or marriage date.

If you're reasonably sure of the year, you can search for the exact date.

In Family Tree Maker, your index of people is probably showing names and birth dates by default. If so:

• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Birth Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete birth dates

If you want to look at Marriage Dates or Death Dates instead:

• Click the icon to the right of "Index" that looks like 3 vertical bars
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Click the pull-down menu next to the word "Sort"
• Choose "Marriage Date" or "Death Date"
• Scroll through your index and look for estimated or incomplete dates

With the list sorted, you'll easily see where you have:

• an estimated date (such as "Abt 1818"), or
• an incomplete date (such as "1836" or "May 1817").

On my computer I have vital records from my ancestral Italian hometowns for a certain range of years. If someone from one of my towns has "1863" as their birth date, I should be able to find their birth record. Then I can change the birth year to an exact date. Loose end tied up!

2. Use Family Tree Analyzer

If your family tree software doesn't have an easy sort feature, or your tree exists only online, have no fear. The must-have free program Family Tree Analyzer has got you covered.

Launch Family Tree Analyzer and:

• Load your latest GEDCOM file
• Click the Individuals tab
• Click the top of the "BirthDate" or "DeathDate" column to sort the facts
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete birth or death dates

To examine marriage dates in Family Tree Analyzer:

• Click the Facts tab
• Select all "Relationship Types"
• Select only the "Marriage" fact
• Click the "Show only the selected Facts for Individuals…" button
• In the new window that opens, click the top of the "Fact Date" column to sort by marriage date
• Scroll through the list and look for estimated or incomplete marriage dates

You may find that you have a long list of incomplete dates. Whenever I have a big task to do, I like to whittle it down by going after the easy stuff. Pick that low-hanging fruit and shorten that list as much as you can.

If your family tree software can't handle this project, Family Tree Analyzer can.

For this project, I would first work on the dates that are a bit more certain. "1818" is more certain than "Abt 1818". I must have a source for that "1818", but the "Abt 1818" is an educated guess or guestimate.

Tackle the missing months and dates first. Then you can work on the harder-to-find estimated dates.

You won't find them all, so don't beat yourself up about it. But I'm sure you can shorten that list of loose ends. Most of them are loose simply because that wasn't your focus at the time.

For instance, let's say I was entering an exact marriage date for a couple. The marriage documents included birth records for the bride and groom. That gave me a source for each of their parents' birth years. Because I was focused on the marriage facts, I didn't take the time to chase after the parents' birth records. The result is 2 loose ends.

Before you begin your next research project, take some time to see what you've overlooked. Go back and tie up as many loose ends as you can. Those exact dates will help your research in the future.

How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree

Update: Family Tree Analyzer is now available for Mac.

The mission of this blog is to encourage genealogists to improve their family trees. To fortify your family tree means to:

• Use the best sources for your facts.
• Locate as many pieces of documentation as possible.
• Analyze your tree for errors and fix them.
• Add thorough, consistent, provable facts throughout your tree.

This quick report lets me see the oldest direct ancestors in my tree.

The more your tree grows, the harder it can be to find its errors. Maybe you added lots of facts when you were first building your tree and didn't add any sources. Maybe you borrowed from someone else's tree and later realized they were wrong. Or maybe you accidentally transposed the numbers in a bunch of birth years.

Family tree errors can happen to a professional genealogist as well as an excited newcomer.

How can you find the errors when your tree is big and you've been working on it for years? How do you find a handful of needles in a haystack?

Reporting Software

Reporting tools can point out all kinds of family tree errors, showing you exactly where to jump in and start fixing.

I've written about the free software tool called Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) twice this year. (See Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer" and Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates to download the software and see what it's about.)

Get the latest version from the source: http://ftanalyzer.com. Go to the Software.Informer website for free GEDCOM analyzers that work on Mac or Windows.

I knew I'd barely scratched the surface of what FTA can do. Now I'm using it to identify a variety of errors I can fix in my family tree.

The first step is to run your family tree software and export a standard GEDCOM file. This is the agreed-upon standard that makes your family research transportable and sharable.

Then run FTA and import your GEDCOM. The first thing you'll see is a long summary of the types of facts found in your tree. My favorite part is this list:

• Direct Ancestors: 189
• Blood Relations: 1,451
• Married to Blood or Direct Relation: 541
• Related by Marriage: 12,452

Click the Data Errors tab. You might see a long list of errors. Some are more important than others, so click the Clear All button. Now click to select one type of error, such as Birth before father aged 13.

My tree has nearly 20,000 people, and I discovered the majority of them in old Italian vital records. Some of the documents had errors. Others had conflicting information. In tons of cases, I had no age or birth year for parents, so I chose to make them 25 years older than their oldest child.

For Maria Giuseppa Verzino, shown in this error report, I have evidence that she was born in 1799. But her father Paolo has a birth year of "About 1791".

Error report for seriously under-aged fathers.

I try to be very consistent in my family tree. Whenever I see "About" for someone's birth year, I know that I subtracted 25 from the birth year of the person's oldest child. But maybe I found more of their children later. Maybe when I found Maria Giuseppa and her birth year of 1799, I forgot to update her parents' birth years. Maria Giuseppa probably has a sibling born in 1816. When I recorded that sibling, I subtracted 25 from 1816 and marked the parents as being born "About 1791".

This is easy for me to fix. I can go to Paolo Verzino in my tree and see if I've found any children born before Maria Giuseppa in 1799. If not, Paolo and his wife's birth years should be updated to "About 1774".

That's one less needle in the haystack of errors.

Now uncheck that error and select another one, like Marriage after death. I have one of these errors. My family tree says that Giuseppe Antonio delGrosso was married on 11 December 1859. But I have his death recorded as "Before Dec 1859". That needs to be looked at.

Work Through the Errors

You can work your way through the errors and correct them one by one.

FTA contains a lot of tabs and menus. Click them to see what may be useful to you. The Facts tab can show all of your direct-line ancestors in a list. Choose only Direct Ancestors in the Relationship Types section. Then choose any fact, such as Birth. Click Show only the selected Facts for Individuals.

The resulting table shows me at a glance that I've identified two sets of my 9th great grandparents born in the early 1600s! I can click any column to sort by relationship, last name, date of birth, etc.

That isn't an error to fix, but it is a way to double-check my ancestor chart where I'm keeping a list of all direct-line ancestors. (See How to Visualize Your Ancestor-Finding Progress.)

So take a break from finding new ancestors, and make the time to fix the errors in your family tree. After you've fixed a bunch of them, export a new GEDCOM. Open it in Family Tree Analyzer and see how much shorter your errors lists are.

Fixing errors is every bit as important as finding that missing census file or death record.

Find out what else you can do with this free software:

• Use This Tool to Discover Family Tree Insights
• Why You Should Be Using the Free "Family Tree Analyzer"
• Run This Genealogy Report To Help Clean Up Your Dates
• How to Handle the Unrelated People in Your Family Tree

Top 5 Uses for the Free Family Tree Analyzer

Family Tree Analyzer (FTA) is a free and powerful program from Alexander Bisset (see ftanalyzer.com). FTA has so many features that I've written about individual uses for the program many, many times. If you haven't tried it yet, here's a taste of the top 5 ways FTA can improve your family tree.

Family Tree Analyzer has unlimited abilities, and it's free.

1. Finding accidental duplicates

Your family tree may have hit a software glitch. You may have clicked the wrong fact type in a menu. Or you may have gotten a little loopy during a late-night genealogy session. No matter what the cause, FTA can find all your accidental duplicates. To create your list, read "Let Family Tree Analyzer Find Your Duplicates Duplicates."

2. Finding missing source citations

Source citations help you as much as they help someone else viewing your family tree. How can you be sure of a fact when you can't remember where you found it? FTA can give you a list of all the unsourced facts in your family tree. You can create a list that ignores certain facts you don't want to source. For instance, I don't add a source for someone's sex.

Now that I've finished an all-consuming genealogy project*, I'm working on my missing citations. To find out how to do this, read "Catch and Fix Your Missing Source Citations."

* I finished my 6th (and possibly last) complete index of every available vital record for my ancestral Italian hometowns. They're free to download at www.forthecousins.com.

3. Finding inconsistencies in your family tree

No matter how long you've been at it, there will be inconsistencies in your family tree. Unless you're working at it day in and day out, you're bound to forget how you recorded a certain type of fact in the past.

I've always been an advocate for consistency. To me, consistency is a sign of good quality control. That's why I investigated some oddities FTA found when it opened my GEDCOM file. You can simply scroll down the Main Lists/Individuals table to spot wording that stands out. Sort by different columns and scroll on through. To find out what to look for, read "It's Time to Make Your Family Tree Clear and Consistent."

4. Finding all kinds of errors

No one wants their work to be messy, but it happens. If you'd like to find and fix your errors, here's a deeper dive for you. Take a look at all you can do by reading "One Report, Endless Possibilities for Improving Your Family Tree."

5. Finding missing details you need to research

Have you ever discovered a new treasure trove of genealogy documents? Nothing could be more exciting! Sometimes we add people and facts so fast that we overlook our mistakes. That's why we need FTA as our safety net. Find out how to use the program to point out all those missing facts by reading "How to Plug the Holes in Your Family Tree."

No matter where you are in your genealogy journey, FTA offers so many ways to improve the value of your family tree. It needs to be in your genealogy toolbox.

These Steps Make Your Family Tree Much More Valuable

My extended family tree of more than 80,000 people keeps on helping my very distant cousins. They get so many hints from my tree that many feel compelled to write to me. Helping them discover their roots is my goal.

But my project to connect all the families from my towns makes me skip most source citations. I know, "Shame, shame!" That's why I spent this past week adding tons of missing source citations. If you find your ancestor in my family tree, I want you to find the links to their vital records, too.

A well-sourced family tree shows the world that you've done your homework. Your tree is valid and worth exploration.

Without source citations, why should anyone believe your family tree? Follow the genealogy rules and show your work.

Getting a Handle on Missing Source Citations

After writing "5 Ways to Find Loose Ends in Your Family Tree," I worked my way through people with a missing birth date. I found many of their vital records on the Italian Antenati website. For the sake of speed, instead of a source citation, I added a note to each person that looked like this:

His birth record: https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua971481/03dOqgV

It's easy to find those notes when I open my family tree's latest GEDCOM file in a text editor. I search for "His birth record:" and follow the link. Then I create the source citation. This example becomes:

From the Benevento State Archives, 1824 nati, Pago Veiano, document 70, image 43 of 51 at https://antenati.cultura.gov.it/ark:/12657/an_ua971481/03dOqgV; https://iiif-antenati.san.beniculturali.it/iiif/2/03dOqgV/full/full/0/default.jpg

If you're curious, the first link goes to the document in the book of birth records. The second link goes to a high-resolution copy of the vital record. It's perfect for downloading.

If this were your ancestor and you found him in my tree, you'd be able to follow the link and see his birth record. That's the real value I want to provide for anyone with a connection to my family tree. I still have hundreds more of these notes to cite. Then I'll run an Undocumented Fact report in Family Tree Maker and start whittling away.

If your family tree software doesn't have an undocumented facts report, use Family Tree Analyzer:

1. Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree and open it with Family Tree Analyzer.
2. Go to the Main Lists tab and scroll all the way to the right.
3. Find the Num Sources column, click the down arrow by the column title, and choose Sort A to Z.

All the zeroes will be at the top of the list, showing you all the people with no source citations.

I don't know about you, but I never include a source citation for someone's sex. It seems ridiculous to say, "Yeah, the census says Maria was a girl, so that's my source." I just don't think it's necessary or of value. So my undocumented facts report is going to include the sex of all 80,491 people. I have to skip all those entries.

Last Saturday, from about 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., all I did was create source citations for those "His birth record:" notes. I completed only 86 of them, so the remaining 447 or more of these notes will take many days to finish. (There are also lots of Her birth record, His and Her death record, and Their marriage record notes.)

Then I'm left with the thousands of people whose vital records are sitting on my computer. I put off their source citations because my priority was getting families into my tree. I knew I could go back and create the citations whenever I wanted. And now I want to.

If you have an overwhelming family tree task like this to do, start close to home. Begin with your closest relatives and fan out. (See "Overwhelming Clean-up Task? Start With Direct Ancestors."). If you use Family Tree Analyzer for this task, sort the list by Source Num and Relation to Root. First you must view the Main Lists tab and choose Export (from the menu at the top of the screen) > Individuals to Excel. Then you can use your spreadsheet software to sort by both Sources and Relation to Root.

Doing that, I see that I have more than 100 direct ancestors who have no source citations. (I'm horrified!) That's where I'll start.

Your Task Won't Be as Huge as Mine

Do you have 80,000 people in your family tree? Did you postpone adding sources in favor of expanding your tree as quickly as possible? If not, then you shouldn't have thousands of missing citations.

I have enough Italian vital records available to add one or two hundred people a day to my family tree for a long time. But for now, I'm putting those additions on the back burner. I want anyone who finds my family tree online to see that I have the documents to back up my facts.

An unsourced family tree lacks credibility. With all the work you've done, do you want your tree to look unreliable?

If you're proud of the family tree you've built, show it! Retrace your steps to find the documents you used to add someone to your tree. Then add each document's source citation to prove you're a thoughtful, careful genealogist. (See "6 Easy Steps to Valuable Source Citations" for help with this task.)

Need help creating your source citations? Don't stress out about it.

• Develop strong habits for creating source citations as you go: "Step-by-Step Source Citations for Your Family Tree"
• Decide which types of sources make your family tree more reliable: "Choosing and Using the Most Reliable Sources"
• Follow a pattern when building your citations: "Add Consistency to Your Source Citations"

Take these steps and show the world that there's solid research behind your family tree.

5 Reasons to Add Sources to Your Family Tree

My family tree has grown past 83,000 people. Last year I began a full-time campaign to add all the missing source citations to my family tree. I've forgotten the original numbers, but I have 5,142 cousins and 52,358 other people in need of sources. I work my way through an average of 100 people a day.

Why would anyone work this hard on source citations? I'm glad you asked (LOL). Here are 5 good reasons to make source citations a high priority in your family tree research.

Show everyone the value of your family tree by bringing the receipts.

1. Sources Make Your Family Tree Believable

Imagine you find a family tree online that contains your grandmother's first cousin. The tree has lots of details and ancestors you don't have. Then you look closer and find that tree has no source citations at all. How can you believe any of it?

Now imagine everyone in that family tree has source citations. They have links you can follow to see the original documents for yourself. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

If you're doing quality work on your family tree, don't you want others to find it believable? Maybe their tree has errors and yours is right. Your source citations are what makes your work reliable.

2. Sources Help Put Others on the Right Track

It's common for people to accept hints or borrow names and dates from other trees—leading to big mistakes. Then others find their tree and perpetuate the same mistakes.

Let your well-sourced family tree be the beacon that shows them the way. The next person who see hints from incorrect trees, and your sourced tree, can recognize the truth. Only you brought the receipts!

3. Sources Give Distant Cousins an Incredible Gift

I love when people contact me because they found their ancestors in my family tree. Often they're unaware that the Italian vital records are online. They're wondering how on earth I found all these names and dates.

That's when I point them to my source citations so they can see the vital record images for themselves. And I give them the link to my Antenati instructions, if they're interested.

I've busted down brick walls for lots of people with roots in my ancestral hometowns.

4. Sources Help You Fix Errors in Your Family Tree

Hunting down records online to get the source citations gives you a chance to review your facts. I've found errors that might have stayed there forever if not for this second look. I've discovered:

• Typos that resulted in a wrong address.
• People I need to merge into one.
• Duplicate people, one with the wrong birth year and one with the right one.
• Missing baptism dates.
• Missing middle names because only their first name is in the birth record column. Their middle names are in the body of the record, and I overlooked them.

I'm always surprised to find these errors, but so happy to fix them.

5. Sources Create a Glorious Legacy

For all the reasons above, a well-sourced family tree is far more valuable than an unsourced tree. If many of your sources are "Ancestry Family Tree" or something else generic, that's not good enough. You can do better. You need to get to the original sources. (See Trade Up to Better Family History Sources.)

The mission of this blog is to help you create a one-of-a-kind legacy—your family tree. Consistency, source citations, and a lack of errors are key to making your family tree your legacy.

I fell down on the job with my Italian vital record source citations. I was all excited to connect everyone from my ancestral hometowns. And I did that on a grand scale. But it's no good to other people without those source citations. That's why I'm driven to whittle down my list of sourceless people every day.

How You Can Get Started

You can generate a list of people in your family tree missing source citations in a few steps.

Use Family Tree Analyzer to show who has no source citations in your family tree.

• Export a GEDCOM file from your family tree, wherever you keep it.
• Open that GEDCOM with Family Tree Analyzer. (Also see How to Find Errors in Your Family Tree.)
• Go to the Main List tab.
• Click the Export menu and choose Individuals to Excel. This will prompt you to save a CSV file to your computer. You can open a CSV file with any brand of spreadsheet software.
• For ease of use, I find it's best to delete every column except:
  • Forenames
  • Surname
  • BirthDate
  • RelationToRoot, and
  • SourcesCount (the last column)
• Use your spreadsheet software to sort the SourcesCount column from A to Z so the zeroes are at the top.

I want to focus on blood relatives first, and people with no sources at all. So I sorted my spreadsheet by these columns, in this order:

• SourcesCount
• RelationToRoot
• Surname
• Forenames

I deleted all the rows with one or more existing sources, leaving only the massive amount of zeroes. When they're all gone, I'll chase down other individual facts with no sources.

Most of my source citations are Italian vital records from the Antenati website. There's plenty I can do to increase my productivity:

• Work on one town at a time. I use a template for each type of citation (birth, marriage, death). Then I change the numbers and links as needed.
• Work on one full set of siblings at a time. I have all my towns' vital records on my computer, renamed for easy searching. (The file names include document numbers and the person's father's first name.) I can search for all the children of one man, see their record numbers, and find the documents on Antenati. The less I have to move around within my Family Tree Maker file, the faster I can go.

Even if this sounds like too much work to you, take a look at your SourceCount in Family Tree Analyzer. Celebrate your accomplishments or steel yourself for the important work ahead.